It’s more common to feel discomfort and to feel like you need to resolve the dissonance when cognitions are important to you or they conflict heavily with each other. Cognitive dissonance is a theory in social psychology first proposed by Leon Festinger. According to this theory, cognitive dissonance describes cognitive dissonance addiction the discomfort experienced when two cognitions are incompatible with each other. Another tactic to reduce cognitive dissonance often involves blaming other people for the behavior that created the conflict. Instead of changing a belief or altering a behavior, people simply blame someone else.
Social Skills Training
Several behavioural strategies are reported to be effective in the management of factors leading to addiction or substance use, such as anxiety, craving, skill deficits2,7. Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. The clashing cognitions may include ideas, beliefs, or the knowledge that one has behaved in a certain way. Psychologists have developed multitudes of theories about why we do the things we do. Their research helps us understand the connections between our thinking, our behavior, and our emotions. In addition to trying to answer questions like these, psychological research can also to help behavioral health professionals develop more effective treatments for mental illness and emotional distress.
Learning How to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance plays a role in many value judgments, decisions, and evaluations. Becoming aware of how conflicting beliefs impact the decision-making process is a great way to improve your ability to make faster and more accurate choices. Negative consequences of cognitive dissonance reduction include procrastination or acting seemingly contrary to our values and beliefs. However, it can be beneficial to remind ourselves that it exists as a psychological safety mechanism to help us perceive the world consistently and to protect the perception we have about ourselves.
Justifying behavior
Aronson’s Revision of the idea of dissonance as an inconsistency between a person’s self-concept and a cognition about their behavior makes it seem likely that dissonance is really nothing more than guilt. The theory of cognitive dissonance has been widely researched in a number of situations to develop the basic idea in more detail, and various factors have been identified which may be important in attitude change. Notice that dissonance theory does not state that these modes of dissonance reduction will actually work, only that individuals who are in a state of cognitive dissonance will take steps to reduce the extent of their dissonance. Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and behavior in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance). For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors.
COGNITIVE DEFICITS IN CHRONIC DRUG ABUSE
In an intriguing experiment, Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) asked participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour). As you can imagine, participant’s attitudes toward this task were highly negative. When someone is forced to do (publicly) something they (privately) really don’t want to do, dissonance is created between their cognition (I didn’t want to do this) and their behavior (I did it). Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education.
- Studies have shown that many abused substances can reshape the communication pathways between neurons (synaptic plasticity), which could contribute to both the formation and the persistence of maladaptive drug-stimulus associations.
- In such cases, they need to know how to reduce cognitive dissonance in order to minimize the discomfort that they feel.
- For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.
- Psychologists have developed multitudes of theories about why we do the things we do.
Informed consent was obtained from all research participants for being included in the present study for publication. Nick Tse and Samson Tse are leading the overall project; they also managed the literature view, summary of previous work, development https://ecosoberhouse.com/ of CMI intervention protocol, and translation of quantitative measurements and managed database and analysis. Nick Tse and Samson Tse co-produced the first version of the four-quadrant theory of collective motivation and the six-process model of CMI.
They found that the young women who participated in the dissonance-based therapy group had less dissatisfaction with their bodies at the end of the treatment, and at the time of the 3-year follow-up interview (Stice, et al, 2011). Cognitive Dissonance is not always a bad thing, and like any kind of pain or distress, it is communicating something to us. If there is a behavior you’re having trouble changing, the things you’re doing to reduce cognitive dissonance may be getting in your way. A skilled counselor can help people recognize and change self-destructive thoughts and beliefs and change behaviors. For example, a type of cognitive- behavioral therapy called dissonance- based therapy has been evaluated by researchers to be effective, even long term, for young women with eating disorders (Stice, Rhodes, Shaw, & Gau, 2011).
This study provides a new perspective on discontinuous usage in the context of social media and expands the application of the theories of cognitive dissonance and self-efficacy. The results of this study have practical implications for regulating user behavior and optimizing platform services. The American social psychologist Festinger [38] proposed the Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT), which is based on Gestalt psychology, to analyze the psychological conflict before decision-making and the discomfort afterward. Cognitive and behavioral inconsistencies produce cognitive dissonance and emotional adjustment needs to achieve equilibrium [39]. Many studies have shown that supportive information contact, information overload [40], contribution overload, differences in system function services [41], and high expectations [42] can produce varying degrees of cognitive dissonance and reduce continuance intention.
Cognitive behavioural interventions in addictive disorders
It is an uncomfortable psychological state that people experience when they have an inconsistency between how they think and how they act. This feeling of dissonance may be experienced as anxiety, stress, or discomfort. Additionally, this model acknowledges the contributions of social cognitive constructs to the maintenance of substance use or addictive behaviour and relapse1. One example of this type of psychological research is the studies originally done by Leon Festinger in the 1950’s. This term simply means that when we have two conflicting thoughts (cognitions), or if we behave in ways that conflict with our beliefs or values, we experience an unpleasant feeling of cognitive dissonance. Depending on the situation, this uncomfortable feeling of dissonance can be mild or severe, and often motivates us to get back to what’s known as “consonance”.
- Theoretical constructs such as self-efficacy, appraisal, outcome expectancies related to addictions arising out these models have impacted treatment models considerably.
- Dan is passionate about disrupting the current addiction treatment model in the USA and wants to see people overcome their addiction issues and not just remain sober, but thrive in life while living their passion.
- In addition to trying to answer questions like these, psychological research can also to help behavioral health professionals develop more effective treatments for mental illness and emotional distress.
Unhealthy Ways to Reduce Dissonance
Leon Fester, psychologist and author of the book; A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), proposed that people experience psychological unease when their beliefs are conflicting or when their actions and behaviours contradict each other. In fact, Festinger suggested that in some cases, people cope with inconsistency by disregarding it entirely and simply blindly believing whatever they want. In other words, they reduce cognitive dissonance by ignoring things that contradict their beliefs. Finally, many of the studies supporting the theory of cognitive dissonance have low ecological validity. For example, turning pegs (as in Festinger’s experiment) is an artificial task that doesn’t happen in everyday life.